(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Open source networking platform developer Vyatta (www.vyatta.com) announced several significant developments in its relationship with software company Citrix Systems (www.citrix.com).
In one of two Tuesday announcements, Vyatta said it had completed a series C round of funding, worth $10 million, that had been led by Citrix, and had included the company’s previous investors. In its second announcement, Vyatta reported a formal partnership with Citrix, including participation in that company’s Citrix Ready program.
The Citrix Ready Program, described in considerable detail in a devoted section of the company’s website, is a typical sort of platform-certification system through which third party products are verified compatible with the company’s products, particularly the Xen and Netscaler products.
More significant than simply being verified “Citrix ready,” Vyatta will be included in the Citrix Cloud Center (abbreviated as C3), a collection of Citrix’s cloud computing and virtualization technology, packaged for the cloud service provider market, along with a sort of blueprint for using those technologies, says Dave Roberts, Vyatta’s vice president of strategy and marketing.
According to Roberts, Vyatta is – to the best of his knowledge – the only third-party product currently included in that C3 assemblage of technology. The Citrix Cloud Center is, like the Citrix Ready program, described in considerable detail on the company’s website.
Aside from the obvious and immediate benefit of exposure to anyone that would be using the C3 blueprint, Roberts says the long term benefits of the partnership have yet to be defined, although the potential for collaboration is considerable.
“We’re still working through details, to be honest, as we evolve the Citrix relationship,” he says. “But I’m sure you’ll see us doing some sales and marketing activities jointly to show how the products can be used together, to complement each other very well.”
Vyatta has made some modifications to its product, in light of the partnership, to tighten its integration with Xen Server. Because Vyatta relies on the X86 ecosystem, says Roberts, it has always worked well in virtualized environments – whether built with Xen, VMware, Hyper-V or other virtualization technologies – to enable the creation of virtual routing, firewall and VPN component. But the recent work has focused specifically on making the product compliment Xen.
“One of the things we’ve done over the past little bit,” he says, “is integrate more tightly with Xen server, to where we can deliver some optimized performance as well as better management integration with some of the Xen Server management tools from Citrix.”
That integration is set to continue, particularly since the improved working relationship between the companies includes the appointing of Gordon Payne, senior vice president and general manager of Citrix’s delivery systems division, to Vyatta’s board of directors.
Much of the funding, says Roberts, will be used for marketing and business development efforts, an increasingly important consideration now that the company’s technology has reached a certain level of polish.
“We’ve been working on it for several years,” he says, “and many of the technologies we’ve integrated have existed in the open source world for years. I think from the product perspective, while there are certainly more things we can and will work on, what we’re seeing is a very robust, mature solution already. A lot of where we’re going to put the money is on the sales and marketing side, to really grow out, meet new customers, engage with them, form additional partnerships and help accelerate our adoption into the marketplace.”
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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